Culture refers to the underlying values that determine people’s behavior. In the workplace, cultural diversity is a result of beliefs, values, or practices of employees based on age, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, working style, worldview, and personality.
Cultural diversity can solve high employee turnover and benefit the organization in additional ways.
Here are some ways in which workplace diversity can enhance employee retention.
1. Diversity in the Workplace Benefits Your Company Culture
Put different worldviews on the table, and the outcome will be better ideas. When employees from different backgrounds, cultures, perspectives, and nationalities come together, each person contributes a unique approach to the problem.
But that is not all.
Diversity in the workplace also benefits you with a better, more precise insight into your consumers, who are also diverse. Here is a case in point: in 2016, America’s disabled people controlled approximately 544 billion dollars worth disposable income.
The truth is that companies with disabled employees will at least gain a more in-depth insight into the products or services that may meet the needs of 544 billion dollars in disposable income. Think about how that can impact your own.
Many corporate directors see value in adding more minorities and women to their organizations, but the numbers are falling.
Approximately 95% of these directors agreed that diversity adds exceptional viewpoints to the boardroom, based on PwC’s study from 2018.
Similarly, organizational diversity improves creativity.
Look at it from this perspective: sameness breeds sameness. If you hire only a heterogeneous workforce—workers with similar socioeconomic circumstances, views, and cultures—you are most likely limiting your innovation and creativity.
On the other hand, employees from different backgrounds will provide diverse solutions to help meet a common goal – your organization’s purpose.
And when people know an organization appreciates their worldviews and innovative inputs, they will be eager to work at your company.
2. Diversity Opens Possibilities for Innovation and Learning
Companies that embrace diversity offer a broad array of perspectives, ideas, and learning opportunities. Various workers can consolidate their talents, skill sets, and experiences to come up with innovative solutions. On the contrary, another team consisting of persons from a similar background and skills might choose to solve a problem in a manner they have always done.
A rise in creativity and innovation in a culturally diverse company can boost morale and a sense of positive progress for the company’s benefit. The resulting success fosters camaraderie among the employees and encourages cooperation in the subsequent company ventures.
Diversity of ideas drives innovation and breeds creativity, helping to provide solutions to problems and address customer needs in exciting ways.
For instance, cosmetic leader, L’Oréal, attributed most of its massive success in burgeoning markets to multicultural product development groups.
In an organization with a diverse workforce, people can learn from each other, as there are various skill sets. Young employees, in particular, can learn a lot from experienced workers to help them become more accomplished in their respective lines of duty.
One of the reasons candidates prefer to work at a particular company is if it offers them an opportunity to grow their knowledge and skills. And cultural diversity presents this opportunity to incoming employees.
3. Widens Your Talent Pool and Attracts the Right Candidates
Applying diverse recruitment helps companies to attract the right candidates. When job seekers know that a company attracts candidates from different backgrounds, they will feel more comfortable knowing the employer does not discriminate.
When job applicants know that the company treats its employees equally, they are likely to apply in large numbers, providing a bigger talent pool.
Exercising diversity in the recruitment process does not only benefit the employee but the company as well. For example, if you recruit a worker who speaks multiple languages, they will be able to reach out to clients who speak other languages.
In the same vein, an employee with a disability can be more useful when it comes to reaching out to other clients with disabilities. The employee can easily relate to those clients and help them identify suitable services or products that best suit their needs.
Practical Tips to Help You Attract and Recruit Diverse Candidates
Here are ten simple ways to make your hiring process more inclusive:
- Recruit from a broader talent pool – To hire the right candidates, you should consider broadening your talent pool. With remote work on the rise, there are numerous opportunities to reach more diverse employees. Try to proactively source and add people with disabilities, LGBTIQ people, veterans, ex-offenders, people above 40, autistic people, and more.
- Place job ads in diverse channels – To reach out to various candidates, strive to advertise your job on other websites, forums, and magazines dedicated to minorities or frequently visited by underrepresented groups.
- Offer targeted scholarships and internships – Create and provide scholarships and internships to persons from underrepresented groups. Start by contacting minority colleges and organizations, seeking their assistance in promoting the internships and scholarships to their members.
- Highlight diversity on your website – Create a careers page on your company website and emphasize your organization’s commitment to diversity. You may want to list it as part of the company’s core values. Be sure to include quotes and photos of your diverse employees.
- Capture diversity in the job description – Go past the “equal employer” cliché and find creative ways to motivate diverse candidates to apply for the open position. A simple phrase of encouragement can make your job ad outstanding and help you attract a bigger talent pool.
Employee retention is a pressing issue in most organizations, and retaining a new employee can be costly. That’s why HR managers should embrace different approaches for retaining talent, and particularly hiring diverse employees.
4. Diverse Workforce Benefits your Brand Image
Diversity and inclusion have a positive impact on a brand’s reputation in two ways. First, in the competitive job market, a company’s approach to diversity can make potential employees choose or avoid it.
Organizations that hire people from a wide array of backgrounds are often praised for being a great employer. And when these organizations advertise an open position, they attract the best talent who feel valued and would want to work at the organization for longer.
Besides, a company that embraces diverse skills and experiences can impact the market in significant ways.
When people are using a service or product, they would like to know more about the employees involved in making the product or providing the service. Most people ask themselves, “do the workers look, talk, and act like me? Do they share the same value systems as I?
While marketers started embracing diversity late, the efforts are at least paying off. In 2014, the Advertising Age captured the diversity and inclusion aspect by stressing how Chevrolet had success with its ad that targeted both interracial and LGBT couples. As a result, Chevrolet’s brand jumped dramatically among the interracial and LGBT customers.
The overall benefits of cultural diversity to a brand are improved brand value, additional customers, and partners, and the company can venture into new markets.
More importantly, an international and national reputation of inclusion can help build favor for a brand across the industry and as a stand-alone brand.
5. Diversity Can Boost a Company’s Profits
McKinsey analyzed 366 organizations in the UK, U.S., Canada, and Latin America and discovered that when organizations dedicate themselves to cultural diversity, they become successful.
The report revealed that diverse companies had a higher likelihood of attracting top talent, which, in turn, improves employee satisfaction, resulting in higher profits.
Credit Suisse conducted a similar study on 2,400 companies and noticed that large-cap companies (worth at least $5 billion) whose board had at least one woman, outperformed their competitors who didn’t have any woman on their boards by 26 percent over six years.
Why Diverse Companies Are More Profitable
In a post published on Psychology Today, Dr. David Rock, a human performance coach, explains why diverse teams are usually smarter, more innovative, more efficient, and often prove to be more valuable than the non-diverse teams.
They Excel at Focusing on Facts
Whenever there’s an argument, diverse teams tend to re-examine the facts. Besides, they are likely to be objective and not be afraid of scrutinizing other people’s perspectives.
According to Rock, allowing employees to work with and socialize with different groups will enable them to discover their biases, which possibly highlights the errors they couldn’t have known before.
They Process Facts Carefully
The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a study that sorted fraternity or sorority members into groups of four. The members received instructions to read interviews related to a homicide investigation and say who they thought was the correct suspect.
Three members were part of the same fraternity or sorority house, but after five minutes, a new member could join them. The new member was from either their house or a different one.
The groups joined by a stranger expressed a lack of confidence regarding their verdict but made the right guess regarding the suspect rather than those joined by a familiar member.
The research conclusion was that when a group has a member with different points of view, people often process information carefully.
They Embrace Innovation
Rock agrees that adaptation and innovation are a significant part of the business. For companies to be more innovative, they should hire more women and teams with cultural diversity.
Profitable companies pay their employees more, making them feel motivated, respected, desired, and acknowledged. Better pay, along with other benefits, makes employees want to stay.
Final Word
Reducing employee turnover doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Start implementing cultural diversity at different levels of your organization. You’ll attract the best talent, but you’ll also keep it and reach out to a more significant customer base.
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Ashley Wilson is a digital nomad and writer for hire, specialized in business and tech topics. In her self-care time, she practices yoga via Youtube. She has been known to reference movies in casual conversation and enjoys trying out new food. You can get in touch with Ashley via Twitter.
